Art historian Martin Hammer's new book argues that the creative potential of
photographs and posters from Nazi Germany were "an important aspect"
of painter Francis Bacon's work.

The artist Francis Bacon dealt with "man's capacity for savage violence" by using elements of Nazi propaganda in his work for more than two decades, a leading art historian has claimed.

Professor Martin Hammer, who studies history and philosophy of art at the University of Kent, told The Independent newspaper:

"The use of Nazi imagery in Bacon's work was an important aspect of his creativity; it is present in many works. It was something that hadn't been addressed."

Professor Hammer believes works including Bacon's Figure Study IIwere primarily inspired by the photographs of Adolf Hitler's close associate Heinrich Hoffmann, whose images were circulated in British magazines at the time of the second world war.

In Francis Bacon and Nazi Propaganda, Professor Hammer analyses Bacon's paintings from the angle of his "horrified fascination" with the Nazi regime.

"Bacon started working with this imagery, looking at the true nature of the regime that had emerged. He used it to explore the instinctive, savage, bestial nature that was dominating everyone's lives," Hammer said.

"There was a horrified fascination with the image of Hitler and the Nazi leadership," he added, in particular a "screaming orator-like figure with a military helmet," an image from Figure Study II, which "clearly sets up the Nazi leadership as these grotesque creatures. You get a sense of his horrified reaction to this culture."

Bacon's chronic asthma exempted him from military service during World War Two, and he spent the early war years in Hampshire, and later in London during the Blitz.

Hammer believes Bacon's work shows elements of fascist imagery until well into the 1960s, when he shifted his focus away from extreme imagery and onto portraits of close friends.

On the subject of why fascist elements have remained unnoticed for so long, and why the artist himself never spoke of his precoccupation with Nazi imagery, Hammer claims he "wasn't asked about it. Interviewers either didn't recognise it or thought it shouldn't be talked about."